During manufacture of electric motor stators having cores made from a stack of laminations, partially manufactured stator assemblies may be supported on pallet support assemblies including a support pallet conveyed by a conveyor between manufacturing workstations. At one or more of the workstations, a partially manufactured stator assembly is removed from the pallet support assembly for processing by stator handling mechanisms that may include an elevator or a pick and place mechanism, and returned to the same pallet support assembly or to an essentially identical pallet support assembly by the same handling mechanisms. The pallet support assemblies must be capable of transferring the stator assemblies to the workstations in sufficiently precise positions in order to be handled by the transfer mechanisms. Typically, a pallet support assembly comprises a rigid, fixed or adjustably fixed stator supporting fixture mounted on a pallet.
There are occasions when a stator manufacturer would prefer to have a stator pallet support assembly so constructed that one may rotate the stator assembly while the stator remains supported by the pallet support assembly. This occurs when manual operations are required to course stator coil lead wires through tortuous paths from the points at which they extend from the wound stator coils to terminal members on the stator core and additional manual operations are required to connect the coil lead wires to the terminal members.
There is, therefore, need for a stator pallet support assembly which can support a stator assembly during the course of manufacture in a relatively accurate position but which enables a human operator to rotate the stator assembly to reposition the stator assembly while it remains supported by the pallet support assembly.